Using Typed DataSets, you can make your programming efforts more efficient and precise, while at the same time providing type safety that normal DataSets lack. Rahul Sharma walks you through the process of creating a Typed DataSet.

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This article aims to give you an introduction to the technique of creating
rich and powerful DataSets with the help of C# to make your programming efforts
more efficient and precise. At the same time, you can provide type safety for
DataSets by using Typed DataSets, to avoid errors at runtime.

Tools and Technologies Used

We will be using the following tools and technologies to build our
example:

Visual Studio.NET

Windows 2000

Visual C#

SQL Server 2000

This article assumes that you are already familiar with the concepts of
ADO.NET DataSet.

Typed DataSets are not a set of .NET Framework classes like DataSets are.
They are the classes generated by tools provided with .NET Framework, and they
have complete DataSet functionality (methods, events, and properties) with some
additional benefits.

Clearly, to have all the functionality of DataSets, Typed DataSets directly
inherit from the DataSet classes. Some additional code generated by .NET
Framework tools gives all the additional benefits of Typed DataSets.
Furthermore, you can access table and columns by name instead of having to use
collection-based methods with DataSets and using indexers until you reach the
DataRow level. That involves a greater possibility that a table or column name
will be misspelled, resulting in an error at runtime.

Aside from the improved readability of the code, a typed DataSet allows the
Visual Studio.NET code editor to automatically complete lines while typing
(using Intellisense functionality). Typed DataSets also provide access to values
of the correct type at compile time. Thus, mismatch errors are reported at
compile time and are not delayed to runtime. This is known as type-safe access
to the DataSethence the name Typed DataSets.